'I Never Judge System-wise of Things'

“I compare dissimilar things, as one would a rose and a star for the pleasure they give us, or as a child soon learns to choose between a cake and a rattle; for dissimilars have mostly some points of comparison.”

Charles Lamb the Aristotelian. Seeing likenesses among unlike things is, the Greek teaches in Poetics, “a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity in dissimilars.” It also implies the presence of someone with a lively mind for whom the world is charged with correspondences. Being literal-minded, seeing only what is there and assuming that’s the end of it, is a form of blindness and must be awfully dull. Lamb is writing to Southey on this date, March 15, in 1799. He refers specifically to poems in Southey’s latest volume and compares them with his earlier work.

Typical of Lamb is his emphasis on the pleasure of metaphor making: “a rose and a star.” The unexpectedness brings delight. Think about it further and the comparison becomes obvious, illuminating flower and celestial body. A good metaphor completes a circuit. Lamb continues with his off-the-cuff review of Southey’s poems and then, charmingly, finishes his letter:

“These remarks, I know, are crude and unwrought; but I do not lay claim to much accurate thinking. I never judge system-wise of things, but fasten upon particulars.”